


Among the Stars

by DarkKnightDan



Category: Kill la Kill
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Alternate Universe - Space, Angst, Drama, Drug Abuse, Drug Use, Family Relationships - Freeform, It's all in space, Military Service, Multi, Organized Crime, Outer Space, Possibly some fluff later on, SPACE CRIME, Space Pirates, Violence, space, space romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 13:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11037021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkKnightDan/pseuds/DarkKnightDan
Summary: When we were little kids, we used to sit outside and stare up at the stars together. You would tell me how, someday, you would be a hero. You would go out into the stars, and save people, fight battles, be everything that any kid could ever want to be. Thing is, there's too sides to every coin. If one of us was going to be the good one, the other had to balance everything out. And it looks like I drew the bad seed.





	Among the Stars

“Hey, wake up.” It wasn't the sound of my sister’s voice that roused me from my sleep, rather, it was the way that she shook me by my shoulder. I blinked once, twice, attempting to throw off the weight that seemed to hang heavy on my eyelids. Another shake brought me out of the twilight haze though, and into the realm of reality.

The scent of the forest rushed up into my nostrils in a silent greeting, a mixture of the scent of dying wood, fallen leaves, and freshly-dropped rain. There was also the lingering scent of wildlife, a strange odor that I couldn't quite describe. A quick glance around my surroundings reminded me of where we’d set up earlier in the morning, up in a tree stand, high above the ground.

“Whassit?” I attempted to form coherent words, but sleep was still clouding that area of my brain, it seemed. My sister smirked, and held the rifle out to me, the one that I had leant up against the tree before settling down for a rest. 

“There’s something in the brush. Maybe a deer, maybe not, wanted to make sure you could take the shot if it was.” I took the rifle from her grasp, brushing a strand of crow-black hair out of my eyes as I did so. Whether it was my sister’s, or mine, I didn't know at the moment, nor did I really care. 

We were both bundled together in the tree stand, under a blanket, to resist the chill that had settled over the forest when we’d come out in the early hours of the morning. Any qualm about personal space had been shattered in the early minutes of our sentinel. 

I raised my rifle, and looked down the scope. The feel of the wood was rough to the touch, foreign in my hands. I was usually the spotter, not the shooter. In fact, this was the first time my sister had allowed me to hold a rifle. 

I felt her breath against my ear as she whispered. “If it's an intruder, you hand me the rifle, alright? We can miss a deer, we can't miss someone who might kill us.” I nodded wordlessly, tightening my grip around the grip of the rifle. I braced it against my shoulder just as I had been taught, and rested my trigger finger on the guard as I waited for something to come through the brush.

Breathe in, breathe out. Every second that passed made my heart hammer harder in its bone cage, as though it was attempting to free itself, so that it might go after the source of the noise in the bushes. 

When the buck came through, it didn't do so quietly. It came careening out of the underbrush, on a graceful leap that sent my heart jumping into my throat. There was an irrational part of me that said this thing wanted to gore me with those antlers, and, without thinking, I shot. 

Crack, the sound of a gunshot echoed through the woods, resounding off of the trees until it reached back toward me, seemingly louder than it had been when I’d actually fired the gun. I heard the buck make a sort of cry as it went off into the brush again, and the smell of a fired bullet filled the air, dominating the peaceful scent of the forest.

“Well, I think you hit it. Let's go check.” Without waiting for me to respond, my sister dropped down from the stand, sliding down the rope that was nailed into the ground. I stood, picked up my rifle, and descended down after her once I had slung the gun over my shoulder. When I hit the ground, my sister had leant down to examine the ground close to the brush where the buck had gone through. 

“Yep, there's blood.” She nodded to the crimson substance on the ground to emphasize her point. “Come on, let's go check your kill.” I felt my heart in my throat when she said that word. Kill. I bit my lip as we began to push through the bushes, following the trail of blood. My heart began to ache in my chest the more and more blood that I saw.

Please let it just be wounded, not badly. I prayed to someone, something, up in the sky, anything that would make sure that I hadn't seriously hurt the buck, but that prayer was left unanswered. When we emerged into a clearing, covered in mist, I saw the buck. 

He lay on his side near the middle of the clearing. I could hear the sound of his quick, shallow breathing from where I stood. The mist made him little more than a shadow, but I couldn't help but feel that he looked far too small as he lay there, dying. My sister hummed beside me, her stone set expression unchanging as she walked forward toward the dying animal, expecting me to fall in behind her. 

I did so, clutching my rifle close as I approached the buck. I knew that I had hurt him badly when he didn't get up and run away from us, he didn't even try. He just lay there, staring at nothing. The trail of crimson red that had led us here had turned into a puddle beneath him,’oozing out of a hole in his chest. 

At the sight, I wanted to turn away, and hide my face. I wanted to let the animal die peacefully, just leave him alone, but I knew that wasn't why my sister had me follow the trail of this buck. “Finish him off.” She gestured toward the buck when she realized that I was still standing behind her. “C’mon.” 

I stepped forward at the command, holding the rifle down toward the buck as I did so. My hands shook, and my breathing came quickly as I put my sights on its head. My finger rested on the guard, just as it had moments ago. The only difference was that it didn't move now. When I tried, my hands only shook more, throwing the rifle around almost to the point where I was about to drop it. 

I felt tears well up in my eyes as my trigger finger curled around the trigger. My heart burned along with my eyes, and I had to bite down on my lip to keep from sobbing as I watched the buck die beneath me. Despite this fact, I still didn't shoot. I still just stood there, shaking like a leaf while I stared at the buck through the scope.

Then, I felt a gentle hand on my own, the one holding the trigger of the gun, and a familiar form at my back. I didn't take my eye of the scope as my sister leant down to whisper in my ear. “It's okay.” She put the hand not holding mine on my shoulder. “It's alright. We’ll do it together, okay?”

“I-I don't think I c-can.” I actually let go of the gun then, but my sister gently took my hand, and put it back on the rifle. “I d-don't want to, it doesn't deserve to die. It didn't do anything wrong.” I stammered through the whole explanation as my sister held me close. 

“I know.” She moved my finger back onto the trigger. “It's not fair. We shouldn't have to kill animals, but we need food. Our home needs food.” She paused as I continued to cry, my eyes now away from the scope. The tears streaked down my cheeks as I held my eyes closed, away from the animal. “And you need to look at him, okay?” I could hear the hints of my sister’s own tears creeping into her voice. 

“He deserves for you to look at him, to die with some dignity.” My eyes trembled as I forced them open, but soon I stared at the buck, whose eyes were swiftly filling with pain. I felt my sister’s finger curl around my own and begin to apply pressure. “We’ll do it together.”

“I'm sorry.” I managed to eek out before I felt the gun kick in my hands. There wasn't a sound from the buck then, it's breathing had ceased, its pain over. When I looked back at my sister, she held her hand out for the rifle, which I relinquished to her happily, tears still falling from my eyes.

“You did good.” She set the rifle down on the ground before pulling me into a gentle hug. I gripped tight onto the hunting jacket that she wore, and cried into it. My sister may have only been a couple of years older than me, but she seemed so much more mature, she handled this so much better than I did.

It wasn't until later that night, when we were back at home, that we spoke. I was in the hammock that I called a bed, the one that I had so lovingly set up with my sister’s help, in the loft above the space that she called her room. The sound of insects outside had faded over the past few months, replaced with the creeping silence of winter. 

My sister was awake in her bed, reading by the light of a lamp that sat on a desk right next to her bed. I didn't have any lights on, and she seemed to have thought I had fallen asleep. When I crept down onto the outcropping of wood that made up my part of the room, my sister didn't glance up from her book.

“I don't ever want to do that again.” She visibly started, sea blue eyes widening as she dropped her book onto her legs, which were crossed on her bed. She looked from her book, and then up to where I sat, perched on the edge of the wood. My fingers dug into the rough surface, which similarly dug into the back of my bare legs. 

“Do what?”

“Shoot something.” There was a moment of silence, before my sister sighed, and put down her book. She turned then, swinging her legs off of the edge of her bed so that we were sitting in the same position, even though I was a few feet above her head. It made me feel in control, to have my big sister looking up at me during the conversation. “It….” I searched for the words in my brain. “It didn't feel right.” Those words made my heart ache the same way it had this morning. “I don't want to do it again, please don't make me shoot something again.” 

“Okay.” My sister got up off of her bed, and walked over to where I sat. She smiled as she leant up against the loft, resting her arms on the wood there. “I won't make you kill anything, but can I ask you something?” I nodded in response.

“What're you going to do when I'm gone? When mom needs you to hunt for the food?” Before I could say anything, my sister held up her hand to silence me, a single, polite finger. “I know how it feels, when you kill for the first time. You probably don't remember it, but I felt the same way the first time that Dad took me hunting. It was...well, almost the same as it was with you today.” She offered me up a hint of a smile then, the gesture foreign on her strong features. 

“You’ll get used to it.” She moved her hand to my leg, gently running her thumb over the skin there as she spoke. “It's not fun, I won't lie to you. It doesn't really get any better, it just gets easier to live with. You start to think, it's either you kill that deer, or we don't eat. Do you understand?” I didn't really, but I nodded anyway. It wasn't fair that we killed those animals, not when they deserved a life too, but I wasn't about to make my sister think I didn't believe her. I did, I just didn't like what she was saying. 

Thankfully, my sister held true to her word. Over the next few years, I never had to fire a rifle again. When we sat in the tree stand, I was always the one to spot, rather than shoot, just like I had been leading up the day of my first kill. I preferred it that way, and my sister seemed to as well. There were times when she would give me credit for the food that we brought home, to our mother’s usual lukewarm response. All it earned me was just a little more food on my plate.

Then, my sister enlisted with the Alliance. It was a whirlwind after that. There were no more days in the tree stand, no more nights up with me hanging off of my loft. It's like she had aged ten years in the time it took her to sign that piece of paper. She was talking with our mom near-constantly, and she never had any time to talk to me. It's like I had just faded out of her existence.

It wasn't until a few days after she shipped out that I was up in the tree stand without a rifle. The Alliance provided our family with food rations now that my sister had joined up, there was no reason for me to be up there. I just sat there, wrapped in the blanket that my sister and I had spent so many hours under over the past handful of years, staring out blankly at the forest. The ache in my heart was familiar, almost like when I’d killed that buck, but it was different now.

It almost felt the same as when Dad had died. But, this couldn't be the same, could it? Sats wasn't dead, she was just gone. She would come back, eventually. She would come back a soldier, that would be the only difference. She'd still be the girl that I grew up with, just with a new uniform and a job. 

Part of me knew that wasn't the case though, that things wouldn't be the same anymore. Just like when I'd killed the buck, this change hadn't been fair, but it was necessary. Sats couldn't have done much else that would've gotten us enough for the food rations that we were relying on now. 

I knew that, when she came back, she would be different. Maybe not in appearance, but she had proven to me over the past couple of months that even joining the military had changed her. I couldn't imagine how distant she would be when she came home.

So, I left. I hitched a ride out of down, to the nearest star port. When I was there, I managed to find myself a place on a Cruiser going out of Alliance territory, heading to some planet in the Far Reaches of space. Without hesitation, I signed on as a crew member. I lied about my age, and within a few hours I was off planet for the first time. I was starting my life out among the stars.


End file.
